Trinity and ontology: towards a theology of being as space in Colin Gunton

This thesis proposes that Gunton's work on ontology is best understood if they are supported by a reconsideration of the concept of space that is used by him but is not as fully worked out in his work as much as other terms such as "relation" and "otherness." It develops with the arguments that Gunton's ontology has an element that can be best understood with the help of the concept of space (chapter 1); that most problems attributed to Gunton by his critics are problems resulting from their particular approaches, rather than residing in Gunton's work itself (chapter 2 and 3); that Gunton's use of the Cappadocians is truer to the thrust of their works than his critics' (chapter 4); that "spatiality" will better serve Gunton's purpose as his third transcendental than "relationality" (chapter 5); that the notion of "the three" which is not fully accounted in Gunton corresponds well with the notion of "spatiality" being suggested in this study, the latter encompassing both relation and otherness and the former encompassing both the one and the many (chapter 6); that the "one" language used of God in the Bible is better understood in an nominal than a numerical sense, corresponding to the notion of "the three" discussed in the previous chapter (chapter 7); and that the God of the Old Testament is the same God as the God of the NT in that they are "God" or "One" (God of all) who is both one and many, both general and particular, both given and shaped, rather than the former representing the oneness or unity of God and the latter the threeness or diversity of God, with the conclusion that the ontology of being as space is more fundamental and so more widely applicable than the ontology of being as communion of persons (chapter 8)

Numerical simulation of the world ocean circulation

A multi-level model, based on the primitive equations, is developed for simulating the temperature and velocity fields produced in the world ocean by differential heating and surface wind stress. The model ocean has constant depth, free slip at the lower boundary, and neglects momentum advection; so that there is no energy exchange between the barotropic and baroclinic components of the motion, although the former influences the latter through temperature advection. The ocean model was designed to be coupled to the UCLA atmospheric general circulation model, for the study of the dynamics of climate and climate changes. But here, the model is tested by prescribing the observed seasonally varying surface wind stress and the incident solar radiation, the surface air temperature and humidity, cloudiness and the surface wind speed, which, together with the predicted ocean surface temperature, determine the surface flux of radiant energy, sensible heat and latent heat

Supersolid and charge density-wave states from anisotropic interaction in an optical lattice

We show anisotropy of the dipole interaction between magnetic atoms or polar molecules can stabilize new quantum phases in an optical lattice. Using a well controlled numerical method based on the tensor network algorithm, we calculate phase diagram of the resultant effective Hamiltonian in a two-dimensional square lattice - an anisotropic Hubbard model of hard-core bosons with attractive interaction in one direction and repulsive interaction in the other direction. Besides the conventional superfluid and the Mott insulator states, we find the striped and the checkerboard charge density wave states and the supersolid phase that interconnect the superfluid and the striped solid states. The transition to the supersolid phase has a mechanism different from the case of the soft-core Bose Hubbard model.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures

Boundary conditions in the Dirac approach to graphene devices

We study a family of local boundary conditions for the Dirac problem corresponding to the continuum limit of graphene, both for nanoribbons and nanodots. We show that, among the members of such family, MIT bag boundary conditions are the ones which are in closest agreement with available experiments. For nanotubes of arbitrary chirality satisfying these last boundary conditions, we evaluate the Casimir energy via zeta function regularization, in such a way that the limit of nanoribbons is clearly determined.Comment: 10 pages, no figure. Section on Casimir energy adde

Automatic collision avoidance of ships

One of the key elements in automatic simulation of ship manoeuvring in confined waterways is route finding and collision avoidance. This paper presents a new practical method of automatic trajectory planning and collision avoidance based on an artificial potential field and speed vector. Collision prevention regulations and international navigational rules have been incorporated into the algorithm. The algorithm is fairly straightforward and simple to implement, but has been shown to be effective in finding safe paths for all ships concerned in complex situations. The method has been applied to some typical test cases and the results are very encouraging